Wednesday, March 28, 2007
News CYA at APD
Posted by John F. Sugg on Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 3:04 PM
Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington held a press conference Tuesday in which he looked dutifully distressed as he proclaimed: "We don't ever want another person in this city to go through what Miss [Kathryn] Johnston went through."
Nice words, and a superb acting job by the chief.
Pennington was referring to the police slaying of Johnston, an 88-year-old west Atlanta woman. Narcotics detectives on Nov. 21 smashed into her home with a no-knock search warrant. Johnston, fearful of crime in her neighborhood, had a gun and opened fire. Return fire from officers killed the woman.
An FBI probe has pressured officers involved to confess they had used illegal shortcuts in obtaining the warrant. The cops had claimed a confidential informant had told them about drugs in Johnston's home. The information was actually provided by a low-level drug dealer.
Police said they found a small quantity of marijuana in Johnston's home. Officers who were at the scene have told Creative Loafing they believe the marijuana was planted by members of the narcotics squad after they killed Johnston.
At the press conference, Pennington announced the number of narcotics officers would increase from 16 to 30. He didn't note that the narcotics squads previously had had about 30 officers, but that under his regime the ranks had been eroded. He also said narcotics cops would be rotated to avoid complacency, and quipped that drug dealers soon would learn to recognize veteran drug detectives.
Police brass must witness any confidential payments to informants, Pennington proclaimed, and narcotics investigators will receive additional training. Top officials -- major and above -- musts OK requests for no-knock warrants.
Most curious of the announcements was that all of the almost 1,800 officers in the APD would be drug tested. He did not say what led him to believe there was a rash of drug abuse among cops.
Carefully crafted into Pennington's press conference was a message: If there are problems, it's all the fault of the rank-and-file police officers. Maybe they're using drugs, Pennington insinuated. Maybe there's something funny going on in relationships with informants.
In other words, Pennington is covering his butt before the FBI releases its report on the Johnston case. That report, according to lawyers and law enforcement personnel, will point to widespread abuse in obtaining no-knock warrants.
By implying there are drug abuse problems among cops, and that narcotics agents have somehow gone sour due to complacency on the job, Pennington is hoping to avoid scrutiny of his management policies that many officers say contributed to Johnston's death and to the rash of shortcuts taken by officers.
Pennington isn't popular with the troops. He has one of the fattest police salaries in the nation, but the rank-and-file cops have had little in the way of raises since he became chief. "He came here for the money and to help his friends," one veteran sergeant told CL. "He's not here for the city or the officers on the street."
Moreover, he has forced upon the APD policies that emphasize creating statistics to show that the police are doing their job. In reality, more than two dozen officers have told CL, forcing cops to produce quotas of arrests and warrants does little to fight crime, but it does make the police brass look good.
The drug squad involved in the Johnston death was under a quota system to serve 28 warrants a month, according to veteran APD officers. That number, considered an extraordinary goal by cops on the street, contributed to the officers taking shortcuts such as deceiving judges in order to get OKs for warrants.
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